31. GRAIN OF SALT

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Welcome to Episode 31 of the Salsa Kings LIVE podcast!

Tonight, Andres wants you to take things with a grain of salt. No one is like you, no one has your exact goals. You are a reflection of everyone around you, and all these people you bring into yourself makes you something unique, and your style is something new. This is why you shouldn’t simply be copying everything. Take everything you learn with a grain of salt.

This isn’t to say that you should doubt the teachings, but rather, it is saying that you should take what you learn and apply it to how it works best with you, rather than simply parroting what you’re taught. You aren’t your teacher. You need to learn to be yourself.

There are exceptions to this, however. When you are under the mentorship of someone, you still need to follow them exactly, as you are learning to follow in their footsteps. This will make it easier for them to teach you if you copy them. Here, the goal is to aid the teacher in teaching you the best.

In general, you do want to figure out how to do your own thing, though. Whether it’s creating a new dance or even a new style, you want to be able to challenge tradition and common knowledge to see if you can make something unique that works for you. Just because it works for the teacher or in the classroom, that doesn’t mean that it works for you or on the dancefloor.

This is why when asked, teachers often will give more general knowledge, because bogging you down in specifics would restrict you, to say nothing of how much time it would take. The goal is to give you the tools to come to your own answers, not to give answers for every little thing.

Of course, being able to find your own style is another challenge. It can be another roadblock to getting frozen in knowledge before you get started, but that is why it is important to be applied to apply yourself to these things. Be yourself with your dance, because there’s no one else you can be.

“I want you to have an open mind when receiving new information all the time. Taking everything with a grain of salt means you’re listening to one instructor or one teacher or one scenario, or one circumstance, and compare it to another. I want you to do your own research when it comes to your own specific scenarios. Of course, you oftentimes will find the situations you are reading about may be an exact match, and that’s good. But I want you to understand that there’s always a chance that it could be something else. To close your mind, to make it exactly what you’re seeing, that’s just being close-minded”